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He turns wood from Detroit’s vacant buildings into beautiful guitars

Entrepreneur Mark Wallace found his inspiration inside an abandoned building in Detroit.
That’s when he realized the city’s vacant homes, firehouses and auto manufacturing plants are not eyesores, but instead provide a valuable commodity — reclaimed wood — that would eventually become the cornerstone for his startup, Wallace Detroit Guitars.
From the benches of a recreation center to the wooden floor planks of a former firehouse, Wallace has been salvaging scraps of pine, maple, redwood, mahogany and walnut and turning them into beautiful handcrafted guitars that are uniquely tied to Detroit’s history of manufacturing and, in particular, music.
“One of my favorite sources for the wood is the Brewster-Wheeler Recreation Center,” said Wallace, 41. The rec center was located right next to the housing projects where Diana Ross once lived. She and The Supremes were known to hang out there, he said.

Link to full article: https://money.cnn.com/2018/08/01/smallbusiness/wallace-detroit-guitars-wood-buildings/index.html